Restaurant email marketing

It’s easy to see that the restaurant industry is a highly competitive market. Failure rates in the first five years for new businesses are notoriously high. Over a million restaurants operate in the US, and the overwhelming majority are small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. In order to succeed, marketing efforts need to keep up with today’s digital world to reach new and returning customers. Read this blog if you are just getting started with restaurant marketing.

Email marketing can be one of the most effective ways to maintain and grow relationships with the dining public. In terms of returns-on-investment, email marketing outpaces all other forms of marketing while having the added benefit of reaching every demographic one could want.

Even better for small businesses, email levels the advertising playing field by making it easy to reach more customers at a lower cost. When launching your marketing campaign, it’s especially important to leverage tools like an email checker to make sure your message is reaching your audience.

Getting Started With Restaurant Email Marketing
Emails are the best and fastest way to reach your customers. What’s not to like about having full control of your message in a cost-effective way? By creating a campaign that allows you to be ‘in front of your customers’ daily, weekly, or monthly creates trust and brand identity. To ensure transparency, make sure you are able to hold up your end of the deal when offering specials or freebies to your customers.

To help you get started, we put together some tips and tricks for your restaurant email marketing strategy:

A mobile-friendly email is an email that displays optimally between phones and desktops. The best place to start with mobile optimization is with a responsive website design. A responsive web design allows mobile users to have the same experience as desktop browsers. According to a study by Smart Insights, emails sent by restaurants have a 63% open rate from mobile phones. Making your emails mobile friendly is no longer a nice thing to have; its a must. More and more Americans are spending time on their phones. In fact, Americans spent an average of 10 hours per day to screen time in 2016—and it’s only growing. If your emails are not mobile friendly, you are missing out on engaging your audience and driving results.

It’s important to optimize your emails for phones as well. Here are some essentials tips for keeping your emails more mobile friendly:

Use a single column template

Using simple email templates is generally best practice due to the limited amount of space you have on a phone. This keeps the email clean and user-friendly. You don’t want your customers to struggle with zooming in and out trying to read the email.

Write creative, but simple subject lines

This is the headline of your email. It must capture attention, incentivizing your customers to open it. Optimizing your subject lines by device type is also another email marketing best practice. This helps make the email more readable and clean on those devices.

Include CTAs

Tell your customers exactly what to do with a call-to-action button somewhere in the email. Keep it simple too, for example, ‘RSVP now’ or ‘Get Coupon’.

Test emails on different devices

Before sending your email out, make sure to test the email on multiple devices to make sure it works on iPhones, Androids, etc.

Choose an Email Service Provider

If manually taking on the email strategy sounds like a big effort, then invest in an email service provider to take care of the busy work. An email service provider (ESP) takes care of the online service and management side of sending emails to a broad audience. An ESP can recommend/provide email templates, databases for emails, automated email scheduling, analytic tools for reviewing success, and more advantages.

Business owners do not have to worry about the programming and digital aspects of working in the online world. Instead, an ESP allows them to focus on their design and content, leaving the technical details to professionals. Some ESPs, like Fishbowl and Bridg, specialize in restaurants with features specifically geared toward the industry.

Collect Emails From Customers

Logically, you need emails to target your campaign. While many businesses rely on the internet to find clients, as restaurant professionals, you have a unique opportunity of meeting your customers in person as well.

The best place to solicit emails is in your restaurant itself. Your customers are on-site, have experienced your food and services, and are predisposed to want to come back.

Offering a way to personally contact them while they are “hot leads” is an ideal scenario. You can ask for emails without being pushy by:

including a comment card with the check that has space for email addresses;

leaving a tasteful sign-up form near your hosting station or waiting area;

printing your website address on the receipt with an email sign-up reminder;

offering a raffle draw where customers drop their email address in a handy bowl.

Online, you can collect addresses through sign-up forms on your website. This format can be especially successful if you offer an incentive like a dining coupon.

If you use services like Groupon or OpenTable, make sure to include a link to your website in your listing so that customers can take the next step to reaching that email sign-up.

Learn Email Campaign Basics

Marketing emails fall into three general categories: confirmation, promotional, and relational. You should have email content ready to go when people sign-up. Schedule it to send at regular intervals, and fill it with content that will prompt someone to respond or make a reservation.

Confirmation: As soon as someone provides an email address, you should have a sincere, welcoming email to send. The email will remind recipients who you are, thank them for signing up, and encourage them to return to your restaurant.

Promotional: Promotional emails will center around specific events and ideas. They can include value coupons, refer-a-friend offers, or invites to special events. You can keep people up to date on new menu items, tasting menus, live music if you have it, or any other information intended to entice the customer to return.

Relational: Dining out is a social activity, and customers love to build a personal relationship with the places they frequent. Relational emails take a more informational approach, like telling the story of how your restaurant came to be. It can also be used to introduce new and existing staff, educate clients on food topics like wine tasting or how to create a dish, or simply wish people a healthy celebration on an upcoming holiday.

Personalize Your Messages

Each customer is unique, therefore each email needs to be unique! Segmenting your list according to the demographics of your customers is the first step in email personalization. Grouping your contacts by gender, age, location, purchase history or any other information you have can allow you to send emails that are more in-tune to your customer’s needs.

Does this seem like more work for you? It doesn’t have to be! Email service providers usually have features to automate personalization for you. If you are looking to save time, then automation is a must. These features can even allow you to set up triggers so that emails that are pre-made can be sent to customers that meet a certain condition. The next time you have a special to promote, make your messaging appealing through demographics and personalization.

Integrate your social media strategy

Even though social media and emails are different platforms, they can still work together to form a great strategy. Social media is a great tool to expand reach and build up your brand. The audience and traffic you receive on social media can also build your email list. You can also post your email sign-up on different platforms in a variety of ways. For example, you can create a call-to-action on your Facebook page which adds a sign-up form on your page.

This strategy also works vice-versa. Let your email subscribers know to follow your restaurant’s Instagram or Facebook page. It’s easy to add social media buttons in your emails that lead your customers to your various pages. Encourage your email subscribers to check out your social media platforms to gain more traffic and visibility.

Encourage Feedback

It’s important to let your customers have direct access to your restaurant in regards to questions and feedback. Adding survey’s in your emails can be a great way to get insights on what customers think of your restaurant. When creating your own feedback email, stick to simple designs so that users can easily click the call-to-action button and fill out the survey.

The insights that you collect can also make for great reviews to post on your restaurant’s website or other review platforms. Online reviews can help with brand trust and beat out the competition. You could send an email after someone purchases something from your restaurant asking for a review of their experience. You’d be surprised by how often customers are willing to provide their feedback; positive and negative.

Learn and Experiment with Restaurant Marketing Campaigns
With the basic strategy under your belt, you can develop an email campaign suited to your particular needs and customers. Keep track of how people respond with email open rates, successful responses, and various feedback by learning how to use your ESP analytics data.
Over time, you will become an expert at targeting your customers to your best advantage and start to reap the cost-effective benefits of hitting the “send” button.

If you are interested in learning more about restaurant technologies that can improve your restaurant operations, sign up for a free 30-day trial with Deputy below:

It’s easy to see that the restaurant industry is a highly competitive market. Failure rates in the first five years for new businesses are notoriously high. Over a million restaurants operate in the US, and the overwhelming majority are small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. In order to succeed, marketing efforts need to keep up with today’s digital world to reach new and returning customers.

Email marketing can be one of the most effective ways to maintain and grow relationships with the dining public. In terms of returns-on-investment, email marketing outpaces all other forms of marketing while having the added benefit of reaching every demographic one could want.

Even better for small businesses, email levels the advertising playing field by making it easy to reach more customers at a lower cost. When launching your marketing campaign, it’s especially important to leverage tools like an email checker to make sure your message is reaching your audience.

Getting started with restaurant email marketing

Emails are the best and fastest way to reach your customers. What’s not to like about having full control of your message in a cost-effective way? By creating a campaign that allows you to be ‘in front of your customers’ daily, weekly, or monthly creates trust and brand identity.

To ensure transparency, make sure you are able to hold up your end of the deal when offering specials or freebies to your customers. To help you get started, we put together some tips and tricks for your restaurant email marketing strategy.

A mobile-friendly email is an email that displays optimally between phones and desktops. The best place to start with mobile optimization is with a responsive website design. A responsive web design allows mobile users to have the same experience as desktop browsers. According to a study by Smart Insights, emails sent by restaurants have a 63% open rate from mobile phones. Making your emails mobile friendly is no longer a nice thing to have; its a must. More and more Americans are spending time on their phones. In fact, Americans spent an average of 10 hours per day to screen time in 2016—and it’s only growing. If your emails are not mobile friendly, you are missing out on engaging your audience and driving results.

It’s important to optimize your emails for phones as well. Here are some essentials tips for keeping your emails more mobile friendly:

Use a single column template

Using simple email templates is generally best practice due to the limited amount of space you have on a phone. This keeps the email clean and user friendly. You don’t want your customers to struggle with zooming in and out trying to read the email.

Write creative, but simple subject lines

This is the headline of your email. It must capture attention, incentivizing your customers to open it. Optimizing your subject lines by device type is also another email marketing best practice. This helps make the email more readable and clean on those devices.

Include CTAs

Tell your customers exactly what to do with a call-to-action button somewhere in the email. Keep it simple too, for example, ‘RSVP now’ or ‘Get Coupon’.

Test emails on different devices

Before sending your email out, make sure to test the email on multiple devices to make sure it works on iPhones, Androids, etc.

Choose an email service provider

If manually taking on the email strategy sounds like a big effort, then invest in an email service provider to take care of the busy work. An email service provider (ESP) takes care of the online service and management side of sending emails to a broad audience. An ESP can recommend/provide email templates, databases for emails, automated email scheduling, analytic tools for reviewing success, and more advantages.

Business owners do not have to worry about the programming and digital aspects of working in the online world. Instead, an ESP allows them to focus on their design and content, leaving the technical details to professionals. Some ESPs, like Fishbowl and Bridg, specialize in restaurants with features specifically geared toward the industry.

Collect emails from customers

Logically, you need emails to target your campaign. While many businesses rely on the internet to find clients, as restaurant professionals, you have a unique opportunity of meeting your customers in person as well.

The best place to solicit emails is in your restaurant itself. Your customers are on-site, have experienced your food and services, and are predisposed to want to come back.

Offering a way to personally contact them while they are “hot leads” is an ideal scenario. You can ask for emails without being pushy by:

including a comment card with the check that has space for email addresses;

leaving a tasteful sign-up form near your hosting station or waiting area;

printing your website address on the receipt with an email sign-up reminder;

offering a raffle draw where customers drop their email address in a handy bowl.

Online, you can collect addresses through sign-up forms on your website. This format can be especially successful if you offer an incentive like a dining coupon.

If you use services like Groupon or OpenTable, make sure to include a link to your website in your listing so that customers can take the next step to reaching that email sign-up.

Learn email campaign basics

Marketing emails fall into three general categories: confirmation, promotional, and relational. You should have email content ready to go when people sign-up. Schedule it to send at regular intervals, and fill it with content that will prompt someone to respond or make a reservation.

Confirmation: As soon as someone provides an email address, you should have a sincere, welcoming email to send. The email will remind recipients who you are, thank them for signing up, and encourage them to return to your restaurant.=

Promotional: Promotional emails will center around specific events and ideas. They can include value coupons, refer-a-friend offers, or invites to special events. You can keep people up to date on new menu items, tasting menus, live music if you have it, or any other information intended to entice the customer to return.

Relational: Dining out is a social activity, and customers love to build a personal relationship with the places they frequent. Relational emails take a more informational approach, like telling the story of how your restaurant came to be. It can also be used to introduce new and existing staff, educate clients on food topics like wine tasting or how to create a dish, or simply wish people a healthy celebration on an upcoming holiday.

Personalize your messages

Each customer is unique, therefore each email needs to be unique! Segmenting your list according to the demographics of your customers is the first step in email personalization. Grouping your contacts by gender, age, location, purchase history or any other information you have can allow you to send emails that are more in-tune to your customer’s needs.

Does this seem like more work for you? It doesn’t have to be! Email service providers usually have features to automate personalization for you. If you are looking to save time, then automation is a must. These features can even allow you to set up triggers so that emails that are pre-made can be sent to customers that meet a certain condition. The next time you have a special to promote, make your messaging appealing through demographics and personalization.

Integrate your social media strategy

Even though social media and emails are different platforms, they can still work together to form a great strategy. Social media is a great tool to expand reach and build up your brand. The audience and traffic you receive on social media can also build your email list. You can also post about your email sign-up on different platforms in a variety of ways. For example, you can create a call-to-action on your Facebook page which adds a sign-up form on your page.

This strategy also works vice-versa. Let your email subscribers know to follow your restaurant’s Instagram or Facebook page. It’s easy to add social media buttons in your emails that lead your customers to your various pages. Encourage your email subscribers to check out your social media platforms to gain more traffic and visibility.

Encourage feedback

It’s important to let your customers have direct access to your restaurant in regards to questions and feedback. Adding survey’s in your emails can be a great way to get insights on what customers think of your restaurant. When creating your own feedback email, stick to simple designs so that users can easily click the call-to-action button and fill out the survey.

The insights that you collect can also make for great reviews to post on your restaurant’s website or other review platforms. Online reviews can help with brand trust and beat out the competition. You could send an email after someone purchases something from your restaurant asking for a review of their experience. You’d be surprised by how often customers are willing to provide their feedback; positive and negative.

Learn & experiment with restaurant marketing campaigns

With the basic strategy under your belt, you can develop an email campaign suited to your particular needs and customers. Keep track of how people respond with email open rates, successful responses, and various feedback by learning how to use your ESP analytics data.
Over time, you will become an expert at targeting your customers to your best advantage and start to reap the cost-effective benefits of hitting the “send” button.

If you are interested in learning more about restaurant technologies that can improve your restaurant operations, sign up for a free trial of Deputy below:

It’s easy to see that the restaurant industry is a highly competitive market. Failure rates in the first five years for new businesses are notoriously high. Over a million restaurants operate in the US, and the overwhelming majority are small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. In order to succeed, marketing efforts need to keep up with today’s digital world to reach new and returning customers.

Email marketing can be one of the most effective ways to maintain and grow relationships with the dining public. In terms of returns-on-investment, email marketing outpaces all other forms of marketing while having the added benefit of reaching every demographic one could want.

Even better for small businesses, email levels the advertising playing field by making it easy to reach more customers at a lower cost. When launching your marketing campaign, it’s especially important to leverage tools like an email checker to make sure your message is reaching your audience.

Getting started with restaurant email marketing

Emails are the best and fastest way to reach your customers. What’s not to like about having full control of your message in a cost-effective way? By creating a campaign that allows you to be ‘in front of your customers’ daily, weekly, or monthly creates trust and brand identity.

To ensure transparency, make sure you are able to hold up your end of the deal when offering specials or freebies to your customers. To help you get started, we put together some tips and tricks for your restaurant email marketing strategy.

A mobile-friendly email is an email that displays optimally between phones and desktops. The best place to start with mobile optimization is with a responsive website design. A responsive web design allows mobile users to have the same experience as desktop browsers. According to a study by Smart Insights, emails sent by restaurants have a 63% open rate from mobile phones. Making your emails mobile friendly is no longer a nice thing to have; its a must. More and more Americans are spending time on their phones. In fact, Americans spent an average of 10 hours per day to screen time in 2016—and it’s only growing. If your emails are not mobile friendly, you are missing out on engaging your audience and driving results.

It’s important to optimize your emails for phones as well. Here are some essentials tips for keeping your emails more mobile friendly:

Use a single column template

Using simple email templates is generally best practice due to the limited amount of space you have on a phone. This keeps the email clean and user friendly. You don’t want your customers to struggle with zooming in and out trying to read the email.

Write creative, but simple subject lines

This is the headline of your email. It must capture attention, incentivizing your customers to open it. Optimizing your subject lines by device type is also another email marketing best practice. This helps make the email more readable and clean on those devices.

Include CTAs

Tell your customers exactly what to do with a call-to-action button somewhere in the email. Keep it simple too, for example, ‘RSVP now’ or ‘Get Coupon’.

Test emails on different devices

Before sending your email out, make sure to test the email on multiple devices to make sure it works on iPhones, Androids, etc.

Choose an email service provider

If manually taking on the email strategy sounds like a big effort, then invest in an email service provider to take care of the busy work. An email service provider (ESP) takes care of the online service and management side of sending emails to a broad audience. An ESP can recommend/provide email templates, databases for emails, automated email scheduling, analytic tools for reviewing success, and more advantages.

Business owners do not have to worry about the programming and digital aspects of working in the online world. Instead, an ESP allows them to focus on their design and content, leaving the technical details to professionals. Some ESPs, like Fishbowl and Bridg, specialize in restaurants with features specifically geared toward the industry.

Collect emails from customers

Logically, you need emails to target your campaign. While many businesses rely on the internet to find clients, as restaurant professionals, you have a unique opportunity of meeting your customers in person as well.

The best place to solicit emails is in your restaurant itself. Your customers are on-site, have experienced your food and services, and are predisposed to want to come back.

Offering a way to personally contact them while they are “hot leads” is an ideal scenario. You can ask for emails without being pushy by:

including a comment card with the check that has space for email addresses;

leaving a tasteful sign-up form near your hosting station or waiting area;

printing your website address on the receipt with an email sign-up reminder;

offering a raffle draw where customers drop their email address in a handy bowl.

Online, you can collect addresses through sign-up forms on your website. This format can be especially successful if you offer an incentive like a dining coupon.

If you use services like Groupon or OpenTable, make sure to include a link to your website in your listing so that customers can take the next step to reaching that email sign-up.

Learn email campaign basics

Marketing emails fall into three general categories: confirmation, promotional, and relational. You should have email content ready to go when people sign-up. Schedule it to send at regular intervals, and fill it with content that will prompt someone to respond or make a reservation.

Confirmation: As soon as someone provides an email address, you should have a sincere, welcoming email to send. The email will remind recipients who you are, thank them for signing up, and encourage them to return to your restaurant.=

Promotional: Promotional emails will center around specific events and ideas. They can include value coupons, refer-a-friend offers, or invites to special events. You can keep people up to date on new menu items, tasting menus, live music if you have it, or any other information intended to entice the customer to return.

Relational: Dining out is a social activity, and customers love to build a personal relationship with the places they frequent. Relational emails take a more informational approach, like telling the story of how your restaurant came to be. It can also be used to introduce new and existing staff, educate clients on food topics like wine tasting or how to create a dish, or simply wish people a healthy celebration on an upcoming holiday.

Personalize your messages

Each customer is unique, therefore each email needs to be unique! Segmenting your list according to the demographics of your customers is the first step in email personalization. Grouping your contacts by gender, age, location, purchase history or any other information you have can allow you to send emails that are more in-tune to your customer’s needs.

Does this seem like more work for you? It doesn’t have to be! Email service providers usually have features to automate personalization for you. If you are looking to save time, then automation is a must. These features can even allow you to set up triggers so that emails that are pre-made can be sent to customers that meet a certain condition. The next time you have a special to promote, make your messaging appealing through demographics and personalization.

Integrate your social media strategy

Even though social media and emails are different platforms, they can still work together to form a great strategy. Social media is a great tool to expand reach and build up your brand. The audience and traffic you receive on social media can also build your email list. You can also post about your email sign-up on different platforms in a variety of ways. For example, you can create a call-to-action on your Facebook page which adds a sign-up form on your page.

This strategy also works vice-versa. Let your email subscribers know to follow your restaurant’s Instagram or Facebook page. It’s easy to add social media buttons in your emails that lead your customers to your various pages. Encourage your email subscribers to check out your social media platforms to gain more traffic and visibility.

Encourage feedback

It’s important to let your customers have direct access to your restaurant in regards to questions and feedback. Adding survey’s in your emails can be a great way to get insights on what customers think of your restaurant. When creating your own feedback email, stick to simple designs so that users can easily click the call-to-action button and fill out the survey.

The insights that you collect can also make for great reviews to post on your restaurant’s website or other review platforms. Online reviews can help with brand trust and beat out the competition. You could send an email after someone purchases something from your restaurant asking for a review of their experience. You’d be surprised by how often customers are willing to provide their feedback; positive and negative.

Learn & experiment with restaurant marketing campaigns

With the basic strategy under your belt, you can develop an email campaign suited to your particular needs and customers. Keep track of how people respond with email open rates, successful responses, and various feedback by learning how to use your ESP analytics data.
Over time, you will become an expert at targeting your customers to your best advantage and start to reap the cost-effective benefits of hitting the “send” button.

If you are interested in learning more about restaurant technologies that can improve your restaurant operations, sign up for a free trial of Deputy below:

What is restaurant marketing?

The main purpose of restaurant marketing is to increase brand exposure and attract new customers to boost revenue. Restaurant marketing can also be used as a way to keep existing customers who may be more inclined to return if they see promotions being marketed. Without these customers, restaurants would be out of business.

Restaurant marketing plan

If you’re a restaurant owner in the U.S., you are one of over 1 million restaurants nationwide. Anyone can tell you that the restaurant industry is crazy competitive. However, the failure rates for first-year business owners has gone down. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 17 percent of independently owned restaurant startups failed in their first year, compared to 19 percent for all other service-providing startups. That being said, it’s best to stay ahead of the competition. One way to do that is by implementing a creative marketing strategy.

A good starting plan is to limit any marketing ideas that might devalue your restaurant. Building your businesswith a strong foundation is key when starting your customer base.

Maintaining a strong website for your restaurant can have a big impact on the success of your business, helping to build brand awareness, traffic, and more. In today’s digital age, a restaurant’s online presence is important. In fact, 80% of consumersuse search engines to find local information for services near them. This means that when someone is searching for ‘best tacos nearby’ or ‘new restaurants near me’, your restaurant should be on the first page in order to be visible. Your website design also has a lot to do with being on the first page. Below are more tips for optimizing and creating a restaurant website your customers will love:

Hire a professional photographer – Find a photographer who specializes in food photography. Professional photos of your menu and interior can add a lot of value to your website and menu. Once you have the images for your website, you can feature those photos on your social media channels or wherever else you seem fit.

Display locations and hours – Including a map on your website help your customers navigate to your restaurant. Make sure this information is easily accessible and clearly defined on your website.

Email marketing

An important first step of your marketing strategy should include building your email list as soon as possible. There are a lot of tools out there to help you get started, such as MailChimp, an email service provider that is free for up to 2,000 email subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. How you select your provider will depend on your specific needs. Once you decide on an email service provider, you can create user-friendly email campaigns (no coding required) to promote your restaurant.

Email marketing can be a great tool for communicating directly with your customers and provides you with instant feedback. Make sure your customers find value in the emails you send, otherwise they will end up in the trash. Here are some email marketing strategies to boost your email open rates:

Segment your list – Your audience isn’t ‘one size fits all’ and the same goes for your restaurant email marketing strategy. It’s important to segment your list so that you can provide the right content to the right people. This means breaking up your audience by demographics, age, gender, food preference, and more. Research from MailChimpshows that segmented campaigns have a 14.13% t higher open rate than non-segmented campaigns.

Create creative subject lines – this is one of the most important lines in the entire email. It’s best practice to keep your subject lines to less than 40 characters with about 5 – 7 words to keep it short and straight to the point. Emojis are also great for subject lines. In fact, 56% of marketers who used emojis in their email subject lines had higher open rates. Think of short, witty subject lines to guarantee high open rates.

Timing is everything – make sure to send your emails at the right time. Try testing out your emails at different times and on different days and see which day has the highest open rate. This tactic takes a little time, but over the course of a few weeks, you should have a strong indication of when your customers are most likely to open your emails.

Keep your list fresh – Just as it is important to add to your email list, it’s equally important to remove unengaged subscribersfrom your list. Hubspot recommends that you try to re-engage those subscribers one last time before removing them.

Have a loyalty program

Implementing a rewards program is essential for restaurants. These programs offer incentives to their customers as a way to market and promote their restaurant. The first step when implementing a restaurant loyalty program is to invest in a point-of-sale (POS) system. Successful loyalty programs are built on customer data, and POS systems are essential in collecting and analyzing that data. Not only will you build a bigger customer base with your loyalty promotion programs, but it’s one of the best ways to encourage repeat customers.

With so many different types of loyalty programs out there, how can you decide which platform is right for your restaurant? Consider the following tips as you narrow down your restaurant’s loyalty technology search:

Know your target market – The customer experience should always be a priority. Restaurant marketers need to identify their target audience so that data insights can be capturedand accurate.

Understand use – How are your customers interacting with your restaurant through the program? Are they redeeming their rewards? When you leverage that data, you can then determine what your customers are looking for in loyalty programs to build accurate and consistent incentives.

Consider a tiered points system – An example of this is Starbucks program called ‘My Starbucks Reward’. Members earn ‘Stars’ (or points) for every mobile transaction or payment using their Starbucks Card, which they can redeem rewards such as a free bakery item or coffee. The more customers use their Starbucks card, the more and better rewards they can earn. Loyal customers who are in it for the long haul will see this system as very beneficial.

Keep in touch often – Sending out emails is not enough. If your restaurant uses an app, make sure your customers get notifications when they can earn more points or updates on any other special deals going on.

Get online reviews

As of today, reviews have become a crucial part of the success of a restaurant. Out of all industries, consumers read restaurant reviews more than any other industry. Restaurant owners need to be aware that good reviews can boost accountability and profitability, whereas bad reviews can have the potential of shutting a business down. A study by Harvardfound that an increase of just one-star in a Yelp rating can lead to a 9% increase in revenue. Another studyfound that users don’t even trust a business with less than a 4-star rating. It’s obvious that the more reviews you gather, the busier and more successful your restaurant will be.

Online review websites have become one of the best lead generation tools for new restaurants. Once you set up your online profile, customers will leave reviews whether you ask for them or not. The most important thing you should do is to always respond to reviews, whether the reviews are positive or negative. Make sure you occupy as much space on each review site. Below are some of the top review sites that your restaurant should be on:

OpenTable – This review site is more well known for booking reservations rather than reviews. However, being visible on their app is extremely crucial. Make sure to take advantage of their review and booking features for optimal customer experience.

Google– Google, being the world’s biggest search engine, has also become one of the most powerful restaurant discovery engines on the internet. At the end of 2010, Google started adding review stars to its localized searches. According to ReviewTrackers’ 2018 Online Reviews Survey, 63.6 percent of consumers say they are likely to check reviews on Google before visiting a business, with Yelp following up in second place.

The Infatuation – For restaurants in major cities around the U.S, this review blog is a must. This blog has reviews for every restaurantincluding an interactive map.New Yorker’s love this review site for unbiased, trustworthy ratings.

Food blogger outreach

The blogger or influencer community has grown tremendously in recent years. These food bloggers can have a lot of followers which can also an have a huge influence on your restaurant. Even just one review or mention from a popular foodie-blogger can be huge for your restaurant marketing efforts. They can recommend your restaurant on their blog; exposing your restaurant to a whole new audience. In fact, a study by Hubspot found that 71% of consumers are more likely to make purchases based on social media referrals. Not only do influencers spread the news about your delicious menu throughout their networks, but they can also create content that you can reuse for other marketing strategies.

Here are some ways you can work with influencers to promote your restaurant:

Go local – find influencers based off of your location. Social media can be accessed from anywhere, but at the end of the day, you’re looking to drive foot traffic.

Sponsored posts – this is a highly effective way to market your restaurant. Collaborating on a social media post or blog post is a great way to tap into the blogger’s engaged followers.

Reviews – Asking for reviews to post on your website from well-known influencers builds trust in your brand. You can even ask for reviews on restaurant rating apps like Yelp or Zagat.

Organize a contest – Giveaways are normal on social media, so why not organize one! Give the influencers free coupons to raffle off to their audience; creating buzz and interest about your restaurant.

Want more tips on how to get your restaurant started with social media influencers? Check out this blog.

Strong Instagram game

Some would argue that the very best way to promote your restaurant online is with high-quality, Instagram-worthy photos. Social media platforms can be a powerful tool for restaurants to use to connect with customers using those high-quality pictures. The popularity of Instagram hashtags like #foodporn or #foodiemake it clear that people love food pictures as much as they love sharing them. These photos will draw in hungry eyes and get customers interested in your restaurant.

Restaurant owners are leveraging Instagram’s platform to become more Instagram-worthy and visible. Setting up an Instagram account for your restaurant not only allows you to share trendy food pictures and enticing images of your restaurant, but creates a space to interact with customers before and after they leave your establishment. In fact, research has foundthat 18-35-year-olds spend five whole days a year browsing food images on Instagram, and 30 percent would avoid a restaurant if their Instagram presence was weak.

Keep reading for more restaurant marketing tips for making your Instagram game strong:

Include your customers – capturing images of your customers enjoying their food at your restaurant is a great way to promote your restaurant. They may even regram your post if they follow you; meaning free promotion for your restaurant.

Integrate Instagram with all of your other social media accounts – even if a user doesn’t follow you on Instagram, they still might follow you on Facebook or Twitter. Share photos on all of your networks to increase visibility and gain followers.

Optimize photo quality – there’s a certain expectation for near-professional-quality photos on Instagram. Make sure to only post photos with high quality, making sure not to go overboard with filters.

Use Instagram ads – Paid social advertising a great way to reach more of your target audience. One notable feature of Instagram ads is that it allows for geo-targeting. This means that your ads will be relevant to your target audience (such as people in your area).

Hashtags matter – Strategically using hashtags also help you extend reach. If your restaurant is at an event, use the event hashtag on your Instagram post. Many local users browse local hashtags to seek out new places to eat.

Become active in the community

Want to boost staff morale, attract new customers, and support a good cause? Getting your restaurant involved in your community can do all of that. It is also a good idea to form relationships with other local businesses when doing volunteer or charity work. People feel good eating somewhere they have an emotional investment. Franchisees can also be active participants, and reap the benefits of community involvement.

Partnering with active community groups, from local co-ops to little league teams, reaches local consumers in authentic scenarios and provides custom social media content. Here’s how to get your restaurant involved in more community events:

Become a member of your local chamber of commerce – The chamber of commerce can help connect you with local schools, city leadership, and other local business owners.

Participate in local events – make sure to check your city’s event calendar, seeking out any events you can attend and set up shop; such as food fairs, festivals, and any other charity events.

Give back – hosting your own charity event is another way to promote your restaurant and give back to the community. If you don’t have the budget to host your own event, having a food drive set up at your restaurant is another option. Collect cans, donations, or whatever the charity organization needs.

Donate unused food – Instead of wasting food, why not donate leftovers to charities? There are plenty of programs out there, such as Feeding Americathat will get your unused food into the hand of those in need.

Partner with a delivery service

If your restaurant doesn’t already offer delivery services, it’s time to start looking at the benefits. Whether you run a fast food franchise or a fine dining restaurant, partnering with a delivery service can help promote your restaurant. Not only is this trend here to stay but it’s growing. Investment banking firm Cowen & Co. predicts the U.S. food delivery market will grow from $43 billion to $76 billion by 2022. With customers craving for convenience, you have the potential to grow brand awareness and revenue by partnering with a third-party delivery service.

Many companies are popping up to provide restaurateurs with an array of delivery options. The rise of these food delivery services shows that people love and want their food delivered to their doorstep. Consider partnering with the following services to gain more customers and more revenue:

Uber Eats– Recently, Uber launched their in-app food delivery service that prides itself on a rapid delivery time. As is the case with Uber, the drivers who deliver your food are independent. UberEats offers features like the Restaurant Dashboard, which runs on a tablet inside the restaurant, and the Restaurant Manager, a web-based tool for owners and managers to see analytics including dish popularity and performance over time.

DoorDash– The big difference between DoorDash and other delivery services is how they interact with restaurants. Not only does DoorDash offer a means to expand the customer base, it also serves as an online marketing platform. As part of their business model, DoorDash gets paid by the restaurants to feature their menus and promote their food.

GrubHub– Grubhub calls itself the “nation’s leading online and mobile food ordering company”. Most of the restaurants that use GrubHub have their own crew to handle deliveries. GrubHub exists more as a compiler of restaurants for users and a portal for restaurants.

Get ahead of the competition

In today’s competitive environment, traditional advertising is not enough. If you want to succeed in the restaurant industry, word of mouth will no longer cut it. Getting creative with your marketing and incorporating digital marketing can set you aside from the rest of the competition.

While scheduling is something that every restaurant does, those that follow best practices are much more likely to profit from it than those that ignore it. It takes a dedicated effort to ensure that your scheduling practices are top-notch, but the benefits to your bottom line are well worth the effort.

Your business’ success is directly dependent on how you manage your employees. With the right employee scheduling software in place, restaurant owners can automate the entire scheduling process and have instant visibility of their business, all from their mobile devices.

By simplifying scheduling, timesheets, tasks, and workplace communication, Deputy can transform business operations. To learn more, set up time to chat with one of our reps below:

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